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    A Sign of Light
    A Sign of Light
    A Sign of Light
    Ebook73 pages29 minutes

    A Sign of Light

    By Jamie Trower

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Birdboy observes the world through a pair of binoculars. Dog trots behind him at a distance, tongue lolling from its slobbery jowls, tail wagging. The memory of his dead mother, a strange man in yellow Y-fronts, a broken whisky bottle, his mobile phone.

     

    In Anatomy, Jamie Trower's unique voice took the reader into the world of a person living with physical disability. In A Sign of Light, his new work, he delves into mental health and its many faces. Everyday situations glow with a sense of the surreal and nod to the poets, musicians and other creatives who have come before him. Amidst at times palpable darkness and uncertainty, Jamie Trower's poems grapple with life as he lives it, and importantly give hope, humour and a sign of light.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Cuba Press
    Release dateNov 28, 2018
    ISBN9781988595214
    A Sign of Light

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      Book preview

      A Sign of Light - Jamie Trower

      If

      If you tied bricks to his feet and helped drown him

      in the water that he rose from …

      Would that be murder in cold blood?

      A staged suicide? Or a sacrifice?

      You met up with his poetry for coffee and a chat

      on the morning you tried to destroy him.

      I’m never leaving, it said to you

      with its brilliant, insane eyes.

      After all those years of selfless solitude,

      you now sit alone still (in the tiniest of rooms),

      writing to him. That tongue, once bird—

      carved on skin and bone.

      A sweet voice that called this hand, this pen, home.

      Sacred to go and be pulled downward for a chance of light.

      Now, where can you be going, then?

      To reconnect to the earth or to reconnect with him again?

      Where would you find it?

      That little thing that was going to be yours?

      Quiet. Now, quiet.

      Listen with me to the voices in the summer evenings.

      Those cherub sounds moving, drifting into the thirsty trees.

      Observing

      A child of eight was looking

      through binoculars from his bedroom window.

      He had acquired, quite skilfully, a birdwatcher

      badge from Boy Scouts the week before.

      He could see the tops of trees waving to him slowly, people walking

      the streets, through his binoculars, up to his eyes.

      How small they looked, like characters in a picture book.

      He had started reading for pleasure again, which pleased his teachers

      and his father. The boy started off with easy literature like

      Captain Underpants and The Famous Five etc.

      He had then moved onto his father’s ratty Hemingway

      collection and the World section of the New Zealand Herald.

      He had taken to Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises

      and wanted to travel to a bullfight during the summer in Pamplona.

      Whilst reading the Herald the boy learnt what power his

      voice had and wanted to use it as soon as he was old enough.

      The boy read about NASA finding new planets like earth

      (because this one is dying)—then he didn’t want to anymore.

      The boy read about the stock exchange and troubles overseas

      and what would happen in the future with the economy.

      The boy hated the idea of being Generation Z.

      If only the world were simpler, he thought.

      If only the big, big world knew that a small, small boy was examining

      it through a small pair of binoculars from his bedroom window.

      If only the world were like Hemingway’s,

      where

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